THE IMPORTANCE OF DISOBEDIENCE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 29, 2013
REFERENCE
One of the things you are bound to encounter, when you write against the grain of popular culture, is misunderstanding; the second is blow back.
I've experienced both from one reader of THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996). She checked the book out at the library looking for a book to be more self-assertive, "and it was telling me everything that was wrong with me!"
No, it was encouraging the reader to be self-aware leading to self-acceptance and therefore to self-understanding. I'm sorry it failed to do so.
TTABYOBF deals with a number of relevant concepts, including the importance of rebellion, that is, of disobedience. Taking control of your life, which is the necessary precursor to "growing up," requires making sense of all the things you have been told are true against what your experience has taught you. This is an emotional bridge to cross. Perhaps that explains why so often this bridge is avoided.
Alas, the only way you can do this with rational sophistication is by assessing your experience and knowledge of living against what cultural society is continuously bombarding your conscience to the contrary.
Society, and its institutions always lag behind the needs and sensitivities of the time because they have such an investment in "things as they are."
It was the original reason why I wrote this missive, and why I post it again.
SOCIETY AT WAR WITH ITSELF
“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heav’nly Muse.”—John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“Wherever there is authority,
There is a natural inclination to disobedience.” —Thomas Haliburton, Nova Scotia humorist
The solution to a society at war with itself is revealed in a much misunderstood concept, disobedience.
There is a time to obey and there is a time to disobey. Before we attain status as an individual, while we are in the process of being molded into a person, it is a time in our culture to obey. But to discover our own identity, to understand what we are about and why we exist for the future, it is necessary, even prudent, to disobey.
Most disobey to unshackle themselves from the conditioning process of The System at some point in their lives. The splendidly perfect child may not find the courage until middle age. Generally, however, the process happens quite naturally during late adolescence. Society has never found the measure of understanding this natural disturbance to deal with disobedience properly, choosing instead to give the conduct an assortment of negative connotations and to see it explicitly in shameful terms.
The System is not a sinister force designed to corrupt the individual. The System is society’s institutional acculturation process, the total impact of conditioning that shapes us into the person we become. This conditioning starts from the moment we are born, long before we have any conscious say in the matter. We are squeezed and pinched, pushed and prodded into what eventually and hopefully becomes a human being.
Experts note the remarkable importance of touching in our early physical and psychological development. Research shows babies held for long periods of time become healthy faster. Human touch also demonstrates long-range psychological benefits. Babies who enjoy constant human touch during their nursing or formula feeding period are more affectionate and gregarious, as they get older.
A husband or wife cold to the touch probably had little to do with the creation of this disposition. The same is true of the neighborhood's outlaws. Love in the form of touching is powerful medicine to the human spirit. It appears critical to development as a human being. There is no substitute for the warmth of human caring.
Touching is an uncommon practice with children of today’s generation. Society is characterized as insensitive. Touching and holding take time and patience. Time impacts the schedule of our hedonistic culture; time which most are unwilling to sacrifice.
Substituted for this lack of touching are things, material possessions. It is no accident that unloved children turn into consumer crazed adults for they equate possession of things with love. Therapy for them is a new toy, a relational gadget, which they can show off to the envy of others. But it never works.
Love is priceless and no amount of having can ever be substituted for genuine caring.
Touching, being in short supply, affects society vertically across socio-economic classes. Money cannot buy affection. The lack of affection leads to disaffection, which ferments into rebellion—the discontent and resentment of authority.
The role of parent, with which the rebellious youth identifies authority figures, is a failed role, an unloving role, perhaps even an abusive role. The pain of loss is expressed in the behavior of the nihilist or the anarchist. The seed once damaged is unlikely to ever bear fruit. It is more likely to putrefy the environment with the stench of social pathology. We are seeing this manifested in runaway crime in our streets and run amuck behavior in our classrooms.
Yet there is always hope. Redemption is discovered when we recognize the way we are, and have the will to choose to be different. It involves a progression:
There is a process of craving affection (which is normal as a child) to discovering the capacity to love as a fully grown up person without the craving. This is the natural road from immaturity to maturity. A key to know where we stand is expressed in terms of love:
Do I love you because I need you (immature love)?
Do I need you because I love you (mature love)?
The answer tells us who is in control. What follows is a journey into our society and us as individuals. It is a bumpy ride so fasten your seat belt.
THE ROLLER COASTER TO SELF-KNOWING
When people start to entertain their own thoughts, begin to sense the quality of their own hearts, experience the conflict between what they are told and what they uncover for themselves, we have the making of disobedience.
This disobedience is both healthy and necessary. It is the only path to maturity. Disobedience is the route to personal identity as an individual. It establishes a human being as a person and not as a clone of others.
Without disobedience, individuals never become persons wholly on their own terms and in their own right. They attempt instead to live up to the expectations of others. Not only is this impossible, it can prevent a person from becoming all that person could become. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it best:
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
This takes giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. It means seeing yourself as the person you would like to become, and then being a friend to that person in a supportive and encouraging manner. The kindness you show yourself when it counts, the tolerance you display when you fall short of the mark, and the love you demonstrate when there is no love about you will ensure you become that person.
Disobedience usually manifests itself at puberty. With the constant assault of the senses via television, radio, newsprint and now cell phones, the Internet and all the ubiquitous social and emotional connections, it can happen earlier. If anything, this acceleration has thrown the individual and society off course and into a nihilistic zone of constant confusion where priorities are continuously muddled.
Still, at this stage, it can be controlled and guided through the obstinacy of the headstrong "know it all" mindset of the youth to an agreeable conclusion, not necessarily through secondary processes such as family support, counseling and education, but more likely through the primary role of the individual finding this new balance within himself to be his own best friend.
Without self-acceptance during this traumatic period of chaos, doubt, confusion and rejection, the individual is unlikely to negotiate the No Man’s Land of disobedience and arrive safely on the other side to maturity.
Instead, the individual is apt to spend most of his days in suspended adolescence, a puppet on a string to titular authority. Before a person can show genuine kindness to another person, he must first be able to show kindness to himself.
The disobedient person, with the courage to accept the responsibility of the condition, recognizes the primacy of The System. He first attempts to find himself within society and to bend the rules to accommodate his developing awareness and personal belief and value system. Outright rebellion is the Court of Last Resort. Unable to find meaning and measure for himself in The System, he goes to the extreme.
Rebellion views traditional values and beliefs as either unfounded or irrelevant. This is sophistic, but such an individual is too committed to “throwing the baby out with the bath water” to sense anything but his own existence.
Life is senseless as experienced and therefore everything beyond the self “sucks.” Keep this differentiation in mind. Disobedience–rebellion remains pivotal as we continue in development, and both disobedience and rebellion have their function in the person who will ultimately reach maturity.
The first signs of change are traumatic for parents as well as for the child, but inevitable.
A CASE IN POINT
Mary was a single parent of a thirteen-year-old daughter. Mary worked in an electronics firm as an assembler. She was proud of her daughter who was tall for her age, beautiful and a high achiever. One day Mary broke into uncontrollable sobs at her workstation. When her supervisor tried to console her, she displayed erratic behavior. She became abusive of the supervisor and went into an incoherent tirade, ending with “Why don’t you mind your own business?”
Totally perplexed, the supervisor sent her to the company psychologist. “She is one of my best workers,” the supervisor said, “what has gotten into her, I don’t know, but she is not herself. Help her if you can. She is a good people.”
The first thing Mary asked when she met with the psychologist was, “Can I smoke?” The psychologist smiled. Mary knew it was against company policy. “If you must, yes,” he said.
“Now, may I ask you a question?” An icebreaker is often the most critical stage.
Mary looked away, grabbed a pack of cigarettes from her purse, stamped the cigarette hard on the desk, then like a hairy armed bouncer, lit it, took a deep drag, then looked defiantly at the psychologist, as she blew smoke over his head. “It depends,” she said.
“Fair enough,” he replied. He pretended to be looking through her file, which he had read already.
“Do you like working here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like your work?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like your supervisor?”
“I thought you were going to ask one question. That is three,” she said studying him.
He put his right hand over his heart, “I plead guilty as charged.” She broke into a guarded smile.
“Yes, I like my boss. She’s a gem.”
“So, I think we can assume this is not work related. This is personal.”
He waited for her reply. Her look expressed volumes. There was hurt in her eyes. Real pain. Still, she said nothing. He waited. It was obvious she was torn between defensiveness and disclosure. Could she trust him?
“It’s Champagne, my daughter,” she said finally. She then went on to describe her daughter in the most glowing terms, a conscientious honor student, churchgoer, always punctual, never lies or talks back, always polite, always tells where she is going, popular but ‘not yet boy crazy like her girlfriends,’ tidy, industrious and so on. She sang her daughter’s praise for twenty minutes. Her face was aglow as she expressed her maternal pride. She stopped suddenly, breaking into tears. The psychologist gave her a tissue. She thanked him, wiped her eyes, the tissue black with mascara.
“I don’t know what to do. I am at my wit’s end.” She then sobbed, clenching and reclenching her fists, as her supervisor had described.
As she continued to sob, the psychologist remained composed, quietly waiting, making no attempt to move on. The catharsis seemed to exhaust her, but also to relax her. She was ready to tell the rest of her story.
Champagne was not coming home after school. She was lying about where she had been; not going to church; staying out past curfew (Her mother had an 11:00 p.m. curfew); being seen with boys. Her room was a mess. She failed to make the honor roll in the first two grading periods of the year, a first! She skipped school and hid a letter of suspension from the principal that was mailed to her mother. Cigarettes were found in her purse. She denied they belonged to her, denied ever smoking. Now she was even talking back to her mother.
“So what do I do, doctor?” she said defiantly. “I understand you have all the answers.”
“What seems to be the problem?” the psychologist said without sarcasm. “What I have. . .” He didn’t get any further.
“What seems to be the problem?” she screamed. “What the freaking hell seems to be the problem?” she repeated hysterically. “You’ve got to be joking?” Her face an expression of disbelief, coated with anger.
“No,” he repeated.
“Buster! You know what? You beat all!” She grabbed her purse, spun around in her chair and nearly leaped to the door. All the time she was shaking her head, expletives leaking out of her hair.
“Wait!” he said. “Please! Wait!” he continued in a quiet voice. “I’ve listened to you. Right? You owe it to me to hear me out.” She hesitated, turned back. “Please!” he said again. She slumped into the chair, looked at her watch. “You’ve got two minutes!”
He smiled. “I’ll hurry,” he said, letting her know she was in charge. That was a good sign. “What I hear,” he began, “is your fear. I also sense your love for your daughter. She is your life. You want for her all the things that you have been denied. You also want to save her from the hurt and pain you’ve experienced.” Mary rummaged through her purse for another cigarette. She was not going anywhere. Her eyes were downcast, fixed on her lap as if doing penance. She smoked furtively, picking off the tobacco from her lips. She was enveloped in a cloud of smoke.
“It is hard for us to realize it sometimes,” he continued, “but what made you the person I see is that experience. Your daughter is taking those first precarious steps we all must take to become a person. Up to now she has been a windup doll, a robot, a machine . . . .”
He studied her. There was doubt expressed in her sad eyes, but she was listening. “She was your machine,” he added, “and you provided all the meaning to that machine. None of this was hers.”
“Now she is struggling to become a person in her own right, no longer your or anyone else’s machine. She is struggling to find out who that person is. Identity is a horrendous problem to her. She will experiment. She will test. She will flirt with danger. She lives in her head. She dreams. She fantasizes. She romanticizes her experiences. She embraces danger everyday but sees herself immortal.”
Mary bolted upright with these words. The psychologist decided to go forward more gently.
“She will change her dress. Use cosmetics. Change her hair. Her nails. Her language. Yes, perhaps even her name and certainly her behavior. Be a tease. Fantasize she is a party girl. Life is her laboratory. She may even get a tattoo for she is flirting with the idea of a more glamorous persona. This is common.
“She will also start to question things, like the value of school, going to church, of working for a living, her relationships. All this is normal, healthy. Also necessary. You smoke. She will try it. If you drink, she will try that, too.
“On the other hand, if you neither smoke nor drink, no guarantee she won’t experiment with them. None. There are no guarantees at all at this stage, just as there were none when you were young. Youth is precarious, exciting, enchanting, and dangerous. But the dangers are so great today and so final in consequence, that the need for vigilance is real. Your concern is important to her. No doubt. She wants you to worry. She wants you to care. She wants to know there is someone who loves her when she finds it difficult to love herself.
“What your daughter needs now is not a mother, but a friend, a confidante. A mother’s love got her to this point. She must find a way to cross the barrier to love, respect and trust herself, to be equal to the challenges ahead without you looking over her shoulder.
“She needs you now as her best friend. She needs that person in whom she can confide and not be judged, who will tell her the things happening to her are part of life, not to be feared. She needs to know her best friend has been there before and understands.
“Tell her she is okay, so she can tell herself that, too. A friend doesn’t have to be perfect. Indeed, perfection is not what a person expects from a friend, but understanding and support when she feels less than perfect.
“A friend makes no attempt to make her daughter into a Mother Teressa or the Blessed Virgin Mother. A best friend helps to understand the dancing hormones in her child’s body, to accept the anguish in her young heart, to appreciate her possibilities without surrendering her will. A best friend helps her deal with her fears and not be afraid to love. Love and fear are constant throbs in her young heart. Confusing. Tempting. Exciting. Scary.
“Give her a little slack. Not too much. Just a little. When she screws up, let her know you know. Knowing she is not getting away with anything is an important kind of punishment.
“Tell her always, no matter what, that you love her. She needs to hear this in order to love herself. Express your disappointment, too, but show her that being disappointed is not the end of the world. Help her to learn to love herself despite her imperfections. Make it clear you are always there for her. This will help her learn to be there for herself. Linus in the Peanuts cartoon is not the only one who needs a blanket to feel safe. We all do.
“You are still her teacher, but the education is now daughter centered, no longer mother centered. Disappointed as you may be, she needs to be more disappointed.
"There is no leverage in saying, ‘How could you do this to me after all I’ve done for you?’ That is mother centered. Say instead, ‘Champagne, how could you do this to yourself?’ Disappointment is the most fitting punishment.
“Control of behavior must move from your eyes to hers, from your center to her center. Once established, flirting with danger will have less and less appeal. You are showing her by being her best friend how she can learn to be her own best friend. It is what you really want, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied weakly. “I want so to be the perfect mother,” wiping her eyes. “I’m not, you know,” wondering if the psychologist could see through her.
* * *
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